Saturday, May 4, 2013

Oooof! Kitni saari outrage, yaar!

Rishikesh memories.... because it is Radhika's birthday today. And I wish she was here. Though I know she is where her spiritual self has taken her - to Arunachala.
But she also loves delicate tea served in beautiful cups... like this one.
*************

This appeared in Sunday Times....

Yet another ( C )Hit-and-Run case….

India is suffering from a serious case of
Outrage Overdose.There is just so much
outrage floating around, we don’t
know where to take it, nor what to do with it. Night after night we strain our
vocal chords and express
anger/anguish/sorrow/contempt/disillusionment/revulsion/horror/desperation/impatience/cynicism….
Oh, a whole bunch of emotions, as if on cue. We switch on an invisible internal
button… and go for it! Mercifully,the cast of characters and racy script have
been changing at an alarming speed, but essentially, we now have a nightly,
high adrenalin show featuring an
official list of Seriously Outraged People. Sometimes, I join this gang myself.
I guess letting it all hang out occasionally is therapeutic, even cathartic.
Whether or not it is useful … does it matter? Last week was an outstanding one
for mass outrage.So much awful stuff happened, it was almost impossible not to
go totally ballistic.That’s the problem. It’s now reached a stage where one
wonders how outrage on such a mega scale can possibly be topped? What would it
take to really, really shock us? A nuclear war?Till then,what we can
comfortably take in our stride has been established clearly. Let’s see… we can aaram
se handle an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with China, our beloved neighbours , in Ladakh. We can look
them in the eye and say ‘Boo’! Niccee! Never mind that they refuse to budge.We
can say ‘Boo!’ till the cows come home and they’ll still be there. And Salman
Khurshid will still be there, too. Perhaps he can’t resist a trip to China
because he loves Peking Duck.

Topping the latest outrage charts was the
Chor Bizarre episode involving crores and crores of ‘poor people’s money’, even as Mamata
Bannerjee ‘made red,red eyes’ and ticked off
those who dared to criticize her.For our part,we dutifully expressed
outrage. On her part, Mamatadi sensibly ignored it. And it was business as
usual in West Bengal (which is really a joke, since no legit business seems to
be happening in that state). The Commies went ballistic over ‘poor people’s
money’ (is it different from rich people’s money?) getting looted. And we
stepped up our outrage to the next level.Nothing happened. Nothing is likely
to. The poor will continue to be looted and get poorer, not just in West
Bengal, but across this great and good land of ours. And high profile lawyers
like Nalini Chidambaram won’t blink before charging a one crore legal fee in
the same ‘poor people’s money’ context. In this particular case, our outrage was
naturally more subdued.

Saradha
Reality Ltd . has shut shop. And the smart folks at SEBI have woken up. India
now knows that there are more than half a dozen Cheat Funds juggling more than
7,000 crores of ‘poor people’s money’
(awwww! Bad boys).Of course the country remains seriously outraged. Sudito Sen,
the naughty man who masterminded the Ponzi (we love the sound of that word!)
scheme before squealing on co-conspirators, is currently cooling his heels in
the clink. In the recent past,Sen, a true patron of the arts, had spent
millions on acquiring masterpieces painted by his Chief Minister, the multi
talented Mamata Banerjee. Several gifts were also generously given to the
lady’s party, and the level-headed Didi refused
to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. If only that Sen guy had not
decided to go public with all those revelations, we could have conserved our
rapidly depleting reserves of outrage.

After all, there is a limit to how much outrage
can be expressed by an exhausted nation. Just a few days ago, we were in
outrage overdrive because of a 5- year-old girl called Gudiya and the unspeakable
sexual assaults on her tiny being. There were just too many uncomfortable
truths to deal with in a compacted period of time. The ugliest four letter word
ever (R-A-P-E) refused to go away, even as those brave and dashing Delhi cops
decided to express their own outrage by slapping a female protestor or two.
Naturally their hugely popular and greatly admired boss, Neeraj Kumar, hung
around stubbornly, while we did what we do best – you’ve guessed it – demanded
his head and expressed outrage. Now that we are over our eyeballs in outrage,
we are a little stumped what to do the next time something terrible happens.
It’s getting a little boring, not to say tiresome, to keep cranking the levers
of that ghasa peeta outrage machine. The
nation wants to know which emotional button one should press next. India wants
an answer – should moral outrage be replaced? If so, what should replace it?
How about… err… sincerity? The time to take a position on this burning issue is
NOW!

5 comments:

I think there is a difference between poor people's money and rich people's money. For a rich man, 2 lakhs is peanuts, 50 thousand is chillar and 10 lakhs is small change and even one crore is a laughable amount.For a lower middleclass person, 2 lakhs is a very big amount and even one thousand means more.